


love and human connection

by seadlings



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: Be Good To Rose Tico 2k18, Finn POV, M/M, i am miserably underversed in star wars stuff bear with me, i just have a lot of feelings, low on plot high on introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-01 22:09:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13304328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seadlings/pseuds/seadlings
Summary: "Save the things we love," Rose said.FN-2187 didn’t know much about love. Maybe it was a fairytale. A myth. A bedtime story normal people tell their children.A distraction. (That one, he was taught to be the invariable truth.)Finn, though, is learning.





	love and human connection

_most importantly love  
_ _like it’s the only thing you know how  
_ _at the end of the day all this  
_ _means nothing  
_ _this page  
_ _where you’re sitting  
_ _your degree  
_ _your job  
_ _the money  
_ _nothing even matters  
_ _except love and human connection  
_ _who you loved  
_ _and how deeply you loved them  
_ _how you touched the people around you  
_ _and how much you gave them_

—Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

 

* * *

 

 _Save the things we love_ , Rose said.

FN-2187 didn’t know much about love. Maybe it was a fairytale. A myth. A bedtime story normal people tell their children.

A distraction. (That one, he was taught to be the invariable truth.)

Finn, though, is learning.

It’s nothing like the learning he’s done before. All of his previous knowledge he has acquired in a very step-by-step fashion, in calculated and controlled settings. How to dis- and reassemble every blaster model in the First Order arsenal, how to polish armor to the perfect shine, how to—well, no, mopping was more of a one step thing. But still.

This is like crash-landing on Jakku all over again, disorientation and a kind of desperate scrabbling for direction. But he’s not starving, not dying of thirst or exposure, not exhausted down to his marrow. He’s not _caked in sand_. Instead he’s...warm. Warm in ways he didn’t know existed, and funny how that’s making him realize just how kriffing _freezing_ he was before.

It’s things like food handed over by kind, if bored hands, his first taste of caf. It’s all the different colors people’s eyes can be, dark like his or blueblueblue (pity he thinks of Captain Phasma when he sees blue eyes now, guilt and anger a weighty stone in his gut). There’re green eyes, and chocolatey brown ones, and ones he doesn’t really know how to describe, like three different colors in one set of irises.

(Hazel, he’s told. Those are hazel. He likes them.)

He learned about hugs early on, and he’s big on those now. They’re kind of overwhelming—people are so warm and solid, walking furnaces and all brimming with life and heartbeats—but yeah, he likes them. He’s big on smiles, too. He likes catching them out of the corner of his eye, people flashing grins at each other or smiling to themselves, or even the small, tremulous ones he sees and now immediately knows have to do with all the people that’ve died and the effort to carry on, keep the spark of hope in sight.

He has favorite ones. Favorite hugs, favorite smiles. Favorite eyes. And it’s all so new and alarming. He feels sort of lost sometimes, like he could drown in it all.

The grief everyone’s mired in isn’t helping. Sure, there’re those wavery smiles, but those are kind of terrible, actually. Frowning feels preferable, because if they’ve all got faces to do their emoting for them—and kriff, what a novelty the freedom to emote is—it feels like they should do it honestly. And it’s all just so heavy. The air in the Falcon gets dense with it, smothering, and Finn’s left to retreat to the gunner seat or one of the few other private spots just for the peace of solitude.

But grief is about love too, isn’t it? Attachments made to fellow beings, letting yourself find hope and joy and comfort in another’s heartbeat, the pattern of someone else’s breathing.

 _Love_. It’s a word he thinks a lot now, solitary and daunting and heavy with meaning. He watches Rose fiddle in a quiet, prayerful way with her necklace, exhausted and hurting because there isn’t a proper medbay on this Forceblasted rustbucket, and he thinks _love_. He watches General Organa sharing quiet lulls in the cockpit with Chewbacca, their grief palpable and complex and communal in a way he doubts either of them will ever acknowledge. He thinks _love_.

He watches Rey petting porgs, chatting with BB-8, sitting silent over the useless remains of Skywalker’s lightsaber. _Love_.

Rose gave him this, the word for the warmth he’s so accidentally stumbled into, but there’s a problem, he thinks. Because she said it to him, and kissed him—foreign, against regulations except _not_ , because the Resistance’s fraternization regs are pretty much just _don’t be an idiot about it_ —and he knows the word on her tongue meant a different thing for her than it does for him. It’s not like the way he can pet Rey’s hair while she falls asleep and feel like he’s come home, or the way he’s starting to consciously puzzle out the pattern of BB-8’s beeps, or the way the General will catch his eye sometimes and give one of those small, gentle smiles that makes his heart hurt.

It’s about some equivalent of the way his chest swells when he sees Poe, how it feels like the sun is shining on him alone when they make eye contact or Poe squeezes his shoulder in passing. It’s about how he doesn’t quite get the heaviness of everyone’s sorrow, can’t really feel it himself until he sees Poe tucked into a corner alone, head in his hands.

It’s a problem, because he doesn’t want to kiss Rose even though he loves her. Doesn’t want to kiss Rey, either, or anyone else, because he wants to kiss Poe and it’s a _problem_. Because he also doesn’t want to hurt Rose. She’s hurting enough already, in so many ways. She’s heavy with it, healing wounds the hard way, the old-fashioned way, while also trying to heal the hurt in her heart. (Also he owes her his life, but he has no idea what to do with that so he's mostly trying not to think about it.)

Her sister’s name was Paige, he knows. They were close, and Rose had known that either of them could die at any time—that’s something everyone here knows—but it’s a different thing, she told him once, to anticipate something, versus having it actually happen.

He thinks Paige shouldn’t have said all those good things about him. Shouldn’t have planted them in Rose’s head. He’s not a hero, but sometimes Rose still looks at him like he’s made of gold and starlight, and he thinks _love_ and thinks _kriff this is bad_ and kind of (a lot) hates himself.

(That’s not new. He has a lot of practice at that.)

 

It’s one of those heavy, still times on the ship, everyone tired and mourning. Rose has fallen asleep on Finn’s shoulder, and even in sleep she’s frowning a little, and he just _can’t_.

It feels crappy, to wriggle out from under her weight, to lay her down so carefully in the empty space he’d just been filling, like he’s abandoning her. But he’s good at running away, so he does.

Not that there’s far to go. The remnants of the Resistance are a small group, but the Falcon’s not a big ship. Empty spaces are few and far between, and it’s inevitable that you end up sharing your quiet retreats with other people.

Fortunately, one of the quiet nooks Finn frequents has a Poe in it today. Finn doesn’t want to be around anyone, right now, including _one Hell of a pilot_ , but Poe's better than any of the alternatives. So he shuffles his feet a little in the doorway of the front cargo hold, and Poe looks up from his datapad.

He’d clearly been hoping whoever had opened the door would take the hint and go away if he didn’t acknowledge them, and for a brief second there’s poorly veiled annoyance in the set of his mouth. But then he registers who it is, and irritation melts into something easier, warmth appearing in his eyes.

(These are the aforementioned favorite eyes.)

“Hey,” Finn says then, feeling more like he can actually step into the room now that he’s caught in the beam of Poe’s smile.

(Favorite smile.)

“Hey,” Poe returns, and beckons Finn in with a jerk of his head, flaps his hand at him to close the door. “You okay?”

It’d be a rhetorical question with anyone else, because none of them are okay and no one really has the energy to handle fully honest responses. They’d all try, because they’re good people, but it wouldn’t be fun for anyone.

But if Finn was honest with Poe, spoke the _I don’t know_ sitting on his tongue, the _No_ simmering right behind it, he knows Poe would sit up and try to help without an ounce of resentment. He doesn’t know how, exactly, he knows that. Or rather, he doesn’t know how he has come so quickly to trust someone to be entirely earnest like this, but here he is.

“Yeah,” he replies, settling down to lean against a crate across from his friend. “You?”

Poe shrugs. Finn stretches a leg out to bump his foot against Poe’s ankle, silent solidarity. He doesn’t know the full list of the dead weighing on Poe’s heart, but he does know that a good number of them died in that attack on the Dreadnought, and that Poe blames himself for that. Finn’s not sure he’s wrong about that, either. Add it to his own list of things he feels shitty about.

“Saw you sitting with Rose,” Poe says, glancing down at his pad. It’s brief, and then his gaze is back on Finn’s face. “How’s she doing?”

“Healing,” Finn says, and frowns. “It’d be better if we had some kriffing bacta, but.”

He doesn’t know what comes after the “but”.

Poe says, “Yeah,” and sighs, pressing back against Finn’s foot. Solidarity.

They fall silent, Finn dropping his head back against the crate while Poe goes back to his datapad. They’re still pressed together at that one point, the outside of Finn’s booted foot against Poe’s ankle. He imagines he can feel the warmth of Poe’s skin through the layers between them, but he probably can’t. Wishful thinking.

He thinks about that point of contact for what feels like a long time, just breathing and reveling in the solidness of Poe. Poe’s ankle, Poe’s quiet breath, Poe’s fingers tapping at the screen.

He thinks about Rose’s mouth against his, the stars in her eyes before she passed back out

He thinks about _You’re a good man, Finn_ , how Poe was the first person to ever tell him that, the first person to grant him worth with the gift of a name. The first person to smile openly at him.

“How do you,” Finn starts, and twitches a little because he hadn’t really meant to speak.

Poe looks up, eyebrows lifting when Finn doesn’t continue.

“How do I what, buddy?”

“Not _you_ you,” Finn says, and then folds his legs against his chest so he can wrap his arms around them, have something to hold onto.

Poe’s eyebrows are still in the vicinity of his hairline, but he’s smiling a little now, encouraging. Finn sighs, props his chin on his knees.

“If a friend loves you in a different way than you love them, how do you tell them that? Like, without hurting them?”

Poe looks...how does Poe look? There’re whole realms of facial expressions Finn’s not versed in yet, ways to broadcast every feeling under every sun, and it’s frustrating sometimes. Like now, because Poe’s expression isn’t just uncomfortable, it’s...something. Something which is promptly tucked away behind a more familiar expression, thoughtfulness etching itself into the line of Poe’s dark eyebrows while his head tilts.

“You mean like if someone falls in love with you?” Poe asks, and Finn nods.

“I guess so, yeah.”

There’s some shifting around, Poe discarding his datapad and pulling his own legs in, crossing them. He grins a little, in a way that says he doesn’t really find what he’s about to say amusing.

“No judgment or anything, but why’re you askin’ _me_ , buddy?” He asks, and looks away. “I don’t exactly have a great romantic track record.”

Finn’s heard something about this, mostly barely audible quips from Pava while she and Poe did the depressing work of trying to turn reserve rations into something resembling real food. Jokes about flyboys and _love ‘em and leave ‘em_ , her ensuing snickers while he tried to elbow her.

“Yeah, but you _have_ one,” Finn replies. He doesn’t mean it to be bitter—it’s just a fact—but Poe gives him this kind of wounded look. Sad. Pitying? Ugh.

“Okay, point,” Poe says, scrubbing at his hair with one hand. It leaves it mussed and chaotic, and Finn can’t decide if his urge to reach out and touch it is about resettling it or messing it up more.

A lot of things happen on Poe’s face all the time, his thoughts playing across his features for all to see. Finn wishes he spoke this language better so he could parse this flood of information, but as it stands he’s mostly picking up something like worry.

“I mean, to be honest,” Poe says eventually, “there’s not really a way to spare someone’s feelings.”

Finn’s stomach drops.

“It’s like, the whole point of telling someone you love them, reaching out like that? Is the vulnerability, the trust. It’s a leap of faith, and they’re invested in the answer they get back. You can be as nice as physically possible, but you’re still turning them down, you know? You can write a 12-page letter explaining why and how and that you still care for them, and it can be, god, kriffing gorgeous, but it’s still just a pretty way of saying, “Thanks but no thanks” and handing their beating heart back to—wow, I’m not helping am I.”

Finn’s pretty sure his face is doing something terrible.

“Not really,” he says, and Poe huffs a laugh, shakes his head.

“Like I said, bad track record.”

“And babbly.”

This laugh has more humor to it, his eyes lighting with it. Finn’s heart does something unpleasant, like it forgot how to beat for a second.

“Yeah, and that,” Poe says, ruffles his hair again.

Finn thinks. Finn says, “So, essentially, I’m kriffed.”

Poe winces.

“I mean, I wouldn’t say—”

Finn raises his eyebrows.

“Okay, yeah, you’re kriffed.”

 _Fantastic_. He has three friends—four? He thinks BB-8’s his friend now, shitty first impressions aside—in the entire galaxy, and now he’s gotta shoot one of them down and probably lose her in the process.

Poe, ever earnest, adds a belated qualifier like he's heard Finn's thoughts.

" _But_ , man, if this friend's worth their salt," he says. "They'll understand. They won't hold it against you, because it's not your fault. It's not anyone's fault, you know?"

His tone of voice is like he's confiding something, like it's not really a statement about another person. He looks serious, and his gaze is unwavering. Finn wonders at that for a second, but then he imagines telling Rose, handing her heart back to her like Poe had said, and having her forgive him and thinks that might be the worst thing of all.

“Can I just,” he hedges, “I dunno, like. Pretend? For her?”

There’s a weird moment where Poe stares at him, mouth a little open, and mutters “ _Her_ ,” and Finn’s kind of thought the weird, indefinable discomfort from the beginning of the conversation had gone away already, except suddenly it’s _actually_ gone and he can see the space it occupied fill with a more reassuring looseness to his friend’s posture. Like a weight's been lifted off his shoulders.

Before Finn can say anything, Poe leans forward, elbows propped on his thighs, and says, “Buddy, that’s a really bad idea.”

“Okay, but why?”

Poe bites his lip, a heavier kind of thoughtfulness on his face, like he’s picking his words carefully, except Finn’s just distracted by the way Poe’s teeth are indenting the pink bow of his lip.

“Because,” Poe says finally, releasing his lip, even pinker now from the dig of his teeth. “It’d hurt both of you, in the long run. And odds are it’d hurt her worse than just being honest from the start.”

“Because,” Finn prompts, drawing the word out long and questioning while he wiggles his hand a little, because _come on, Poe, I’m new at this_.

There’s a little huff, but then Poe’s smiling a little again, rolling his eyes at Finn’s impatience.

“Because one day, she’d find out you went into the thing knowing that you didn’t love her like that—no one can lie forever, Finn, seriously—and that she’s been in this more or less fake relationship for Force knows how long, and it’d just be _bad_ , buddy.” And Finn must look more confused than he really feels, because Poe goes on after a second of eyeing him. “Imagine that you tell me you just kriffing _love_ blueberry pie, right? And I say, “oh man, me too!” And so you start just baking all these blueberry pies, and every time we hang out you’re like “look, pie!” And so we eat pie, and talk about how much we love this kriffing pie, right? And, like, two years later you mention the pie to my dad, and he goes, “Blueberry pie? You must be thinking of someone else, Poe _hates_ blueberries, in or out of pie!” And then you’re faced with these two entire years of this shared experience that turns out to have been a ruse from the get-go, because I was too scared to tell you I hate your favorite food in the universe.”

Finn blinks, and squints, and says, “What the Hell is pie?”

“Son of a Sith,” Poe says, staring at him like he just sat on one of the porgs. “Kriffing—okay, we’ll deal with that later. The _point_ is that dishonesty in close relationships is shitty as all get-out, and on the level you just proposed it’s, well. It’s _bad_ , Finn. It’d hurt her, it’d hurt you, and I know right now you’re worried about losing a friend, but it’s possible to get a friendship through something like this. It’s _not_ possible to get one through something like _that_.”

And unfortunately, that makes a lot of sense. He thinks about the look on Rose’s face when she’d realized he was trying to desert, and then multiplies it by ten.

“Okay,” he says, and he hears how tired he sounds as he says it.

Poe must hear it too, because he scoots over to sit next to Finn, bumping their shoulders together. Solidarity.

“I know it’s hard, buddy,” he says, and it seems like an automatic move for him to wrap an arm around Finn’s shoulders when he sags against him. Poe smells like oil and leather and sweat, and it’s the most comforting smell Finn knows, aside from Rey’s similar combo of oil and sweat and that earthy soap she brought back from Ahch-To.

“Being a good person?”

“Yeah.” Poe squeezes him, presses his cheek to Finn’s hair. “But hey, you do a better job of it than most.”

Finn doesn’t believe that for a second, but he lets it pass. He’s too tired to argue, and saying things like that always puts an upsetting look on Poe’s face.

They sit like that for a while, quiet and close, Poe brushing his thumb back and forth over Poe’s shoulder sometimes, palm warm through the leather of whoever’s jacket this is (Poe’s? Finn’s? He’s never sure).

He thinks _love_.

He thinks a lot of cuss words, after that.

 

* * *

 

Rose takes it about as well as Finn thinks it’s possible to take something like that, especially considering she’s wounded and grieving and hungry.

(They’ve managed a couple covert supply runs, but it’s hard to pull off shopping trips when you’re flying a very recognizable ship that’s been put up for a well-publicized bounty by the First Order, and finding safe harbor is taking a distressing amount of time. Hunger’s been status quo for a few days now.)

“Rose, I’m sorry,” he says for the thousandth time, and she clenches her jaw, squeezes her eyes shut. A few tears slip out and track down her round cheeks with all the speed of a galloping fathier.

“I know, Finn,” she says, watery but firm. “I heard you the first seventy times.”

He mutters, “ _Sorry_ ,” and her eyes flash open to glare at him. “I didn’t—”

“Want to hurt me? Finn, I know that. I know, I really do,” she says, rubbing at her eyes. When she looks at him again, she’s less tense, more sad. Resigned. “Everything in me wants to tell you that it’s fine and all that, and it _will_ be, you know. Once I’ve processed, but right now it’s…”

“Not fine?”

“No. Or, I mean, I’m glad you told me, that you didn’t try to lie or something to keep from hurting my feelings, and you need to do what you need to do, but I’m…”

“Not fine?”

Miracle of miracles, she laughs, just a little.

“No,” she says, rubbing again at one of her eyes. “But it’s not your fault.”

“Okay,” he says, even though it’s not. Because it _is_ his fault, and he doesn’t know what he did to deserve all of these friends so nice that they say these things without any sign of falsity.

Rose touches his arm, all fingertips and he can barely feel it through the sleeve of his (Poe’s?) jacket. And then she leaves, no doubt questing for another of the prized private nooks on the ship.

He curses, low and fervent.

It’s not like he’d meant to do it _now_. Not today, or even maybe this week. It could wait, right? Wait until things were better, like she wasn’t still bandaged and wincing every time the broken ribs made themselves known, which was _always_ because you kind of use your intercostals a lot so broken ribs are just a whole world of hurt. Until they maybe all had full bellies and they maybe had dirt under their feet again and they'd maybe gotten to sleep on cots instead of the hard, cold floor. But then she’d found him in the galley, and most everyone else was asleep and she’d been smiling and joking with him and then had tried to kiss him again.

It had been a sweet kind of lean up, her on her toes and supporting herself with a hand on his chest. He hadn’t realized what was happening until a second before their lips met, and then he was scrambling back. She’d almost fallen over, a stumble that very clearly _hurt_ , and he’d knocked over his cup of water with one flailing hand, and then everything had just been really, really awkward.

He guesses it’s a little better now, without this looming over his head. She knows, and she doesn’t seem to hate him or anything, so it’s—

“Oh, hey, buddy!” Poe appears in the door with a smile and more of his chaos hair. “I just saw Rose, is she—”

He trails off, and Poe’s clearly fluent in facial expressions because he reads Finn’s and goes, “ _Ohhh_ , so _she’s_ —Right. Okay.” Then, after two awkward beats. “You okay?”

Kriff, he’ll never get used to being asked that question. He shrugs, refills his water cup.

Poe says, “That bad, huh?”

He doesn’t expect to laugh, but he does, just once. Nothing feels very funny, but there it is.

“Yeah,” he says, and sits. Poe comes to lean against the stove, eyes warm and concerned on Finn’s face, and Finn thinks about sunlight and warm showers and, mostly, love. “But I think it was okay, too. I don’t think she hates me, or anything.”

Poe tilts his mouth like thinking, or maybe sadness, or maybe pity. Finn thinks it’s sadness, but the kind that’s a brief pang that makes room for other things a moment later.

“I doubt she does,” he says, and Finn gets this feeling like Poe had wanted to say _I doubt anyone could_ , instead.

Finn shrugs again, scuffs at the floor.

“I just feel bad,” he says, eyes on his boots. “Like I should have headed it off from the get-go, or—”

Poe cuts him off, which is fine because Finn doesn’t know what else he’d have said.

“Finn, you couldn’t have known.”

“Sure I could have! She looks at me like I hung the moon or something.”

“Yeah, well—” And then Poe cuts himself off with a wince. “You’re new at this, bud. And she knows that. Or maybe she forgot, but I’m sure she knows now.”

“What’m I new at?” Other than everything.

“You know,” Poe says, gesturing nebulously with one hand.

Finn doesn’t know, and his stare says as much.

“ _You know_ ,” Poe repeats, but continues this time. “Having options.”

He’s not sure what options have to do with not loving Rose, but judging by the light in Poe’s eyes, he’s about to find out. He looks more alive than he did a minute ago, which begs the question of what he’d looked like before, if not “alive.”

“For most of your life, free will was a non-entity, yeah? You did what you were told to do when and how you were told to do it, up to and including what to wear, how to walk, how to interact.” Poe’s getting Hand Talky. Finn thinks _love_ and has to bite back what would probably be a really dopey (and incongruous, considering the topic) smile. Because he _loves_ it when Poe gets like this, all fervent and so full of feeling that it comes out in his gestures as well as his words, broad sweeps of his hands, flexes of his fingers, this intense lean to his posture, like he’s giving something. Care, maybe.

“And now you’re a free man, and you get to _choose_. You have decisions to make, and a lot of them. Small things, like when you go to bed or what clothes you wear or who you talk to; and big things, like staying with the Resistance, like going in to kill that tracker—like _loving someone_. Not that that’s _a choice_ , per se, but following through on it is one. It’s a lot of them, really. But it’s all new, and the way I see it, you’re still kind of figuring out the friendship thing, yeah? And the choose-your-own-schedule thing. So putting romance on the table now?”

Poe wobbles his hand, like _ehhh_.

Finn frowns, and Poe blinks, surprised at the sudden heaviness of Finn’s expression.

“Not that I’m blaming her or anything!” he scrambles, holding his hands up in surrender. “Shit happens, you know? And we’re all wound-up and stressed, it’s not like any of us is making super sound decisions, and as far as _un_ sound decisions go, pursuing something as, you know, good as earnest romance right now is—”

“Poe,” Finn says, and Poe stops talking immediately, which kind of kills the rest of Finn’s sentence, which is, “shut up.”

The face Poe is making says he doesn’t know what he did wrong, but that he knows Finn is ticked off and that he’s not happy about it. Finn thinks about love and how, now that he’s doing wild things like letting himself actually feel his emotions, he can go from wanting to grin like a moron one second to scowling like General Hux the next. He thinks about Poe’s mouth, hanging a little open now, all lips and the faintest peek of tongue and teeth.

“It’s not your call whether I try to do romantic shit right now,” Finn says, and Poe’s eyes widen a little more. “Or ever, I think."

“Yeah! Yeah, of course not, Finn, of _course_ , I wasn’t—”

“You were.”

“Was I?”

“I think so.”

“Okay. So not doing that anymore.”

“Good.”

They stare at each other, and Poe laughs awkwardly, like trying to fill the tense quiet between them, and Finn cracks a smile and Poe smiles harder at that.

And it’s fine after that, even though Finn’s kind of distracted now. Thinking things, thinking about Poe’s mobile hands and the fine, strong line of Poe’s jaw, dark with stubble he’s neglected to shave in a couple days. Thinking about the newness of people caring about him, and of how it feels like he’s the center of the universe when Poe looks at him. Like everything else goes away, because he’s gained the single-minded focus of this phenomenal person.

He thinks about the way Rose looks at him— _looked_ , maybe her reverence will dim now, _please please_ —and then thinks about the way Poe looks at him, and he’d said that thing about Rose looking at him like he hung the moon just a minute ago, so it’s not a far reach from that to realizing that Poe looks at him like he hung the _stars_. Every single one, fixed them in space for Poe to gaze at and yearn for in that way he has: intent, awed, loving.

They banter while Poe guiltily uses up the last of the instant caf, and Finn can’t pull his eyes away because he’s _beautiful_ and, for the first time, Finn realizes Poe might think the same of him.

This is a problem, because it’s not a problem at all.

 

* * *

 

A week later, they’ve gotten heavily coded intel from a highly reticent contact of the General’s, pointing them to a long-abandoned rebel base in the Outer Rim.

It’s not much, but it’s something. It’s ground and sky and fresh air— _frigid_ air, but fresh all the same.

They spend a day picking through the scrap and detritus of the base, and Poe and Pava are ecstatic to find a handful of ancient X-wings locked in a recessed shit-heap of a hangar. BB-8 and Rey get the command center systems working again, including comms, with little help from C3PO, who mostly dithers.

And there’s food, though they have to forage and hunt for it. There’s a long-neglected greenhouse with a crop of tubers and greens that have grown wild and free when left to their own devices. There’s some improbable natural fruit growing in the sparse forest nearby, tough and bitter, but edible. And there’s game.

There’s a hunting group that Finn tags along with sometimes, just for something to do that isn’t cleaning. Because that’s what he’s fallen back on in the last few days, the muscle memory of sanitation, mopping and sweeping away as much of the grime as he can tackle on his own. No one else has deemed it a necessary task, so it’s a solitary one. Rey and Poe help sometimes, of course, but they’re needed elsewhere often as not. It’s fine.

Honestly, it _is_ fine. It helps him think, and after two and a half weeks cooped up in the Falcon with too many people, it’s nice to be on his own. Sometimes he ends up in a corner of base without another person around for an hour, two hours at a time. Just him, the sharp smell of the cleaning chemicals he’d found in a storage closet, and this thoughts.

Sometimes his thoughts are dark and terrible, and his scrubbing will grow sharp and angry. He thinks about marching and reconditioning, Phasma and her pale skin and blue eye and the way her armor had reflected back the fire she’d surely died in. He thinks about FN-2187. He thinks about identity, autonomy, and how he’s somewhere around 25 years old, give or take a standard year, and only just now learning about these things. He thinks about death, and loss, and how everyone here bows to that pain sometimes, strong shoulders slumped with sorrow, and how none of them deserve this. Their greatest crime is hoping too hard, and their suffering is unconscionable.

But then he thinks about that hope, how it burns like a sun in Rey’s eyes, how it firms Poe’s posture and steadies Rose’s steps. He thinks about General Organa, still strong despite everything, despite age and near-death and so, so much loss.

These are times his mind goes lighter, when he’ll catch himself smiling to himself or humming—a habit he’s picked up from Snap. It’s not all aimless, either, because he knows some _songs_ now. All the words, all the notes. It’s kriffing _great_ .

He thinks about that hope, and he thinks about his friends. He thinks about them _a lot_ , them and this new kind of warmth he’s only just learned about. Not the warmth of Rey’s hugs or Rose’s laugh or BB-8 bumping against his shin in greeting, but that of _Poe’s_ hugs, _Poe’s_ laughs, _Poe_ mock-punching Finn’s shoulder in greeting.

If Finn’s friends are a sun-warm day, wind in leaves and pretty dappled light, then Poe is the first warm shower he ever took, all hot water and the easing of his muscles and the foreign knowledge that he could take however long he damn well pleased, because he was kriffing _free_ and people here didn’t give a shit how long you stood in the shower. Poe is that first ever cup of caf, that first set of emotive eyes meeting his, that first hug, that first smile. Poe’s the first time someone said his name, the first time he even had a name to _say_ , and the giver of his first actual possession. Poe is his freedom, and half of his home, and Finn’s smart enough to know that _first_ doesn’t have to mean _best_ , but he’s had seconds and thirds and sevenths and thirteenths of a good number of these things now, and _first_ is still in first place.

Poe had said something about unsound choices, right after Finn’d talked to Rose. About how, as far as those went, loving someone was at least a nice one.

Maybe he’s right, about the unsound part. But he’s also right about the other part. Loving someone is nice, and he might still be new to everything, and shit might be kriffed right now, but one thing that’s taken no time at all to learn is knowing what he wants.

At first, what he’d wanted had been selfish things. To be free at whatever cost, to rescue Rey at whatever cost, to run away from the fight.

Wanting to hold Poe for longer than the slightly protracted thirty seconds their hugs usually take is probably still selfish—is _definitely_ selfish—but he’s also seen the way Poe glows after those hugs, the way his eyes follow Finn when they’re in the same room. And he wants to make Poe smile, because Poe deserves to be happy—that doesn’t feel very selfish at all. It feels nice.

He _wants_ .

He doesn’t know how to _get._

He starts with this:

Lingering over dinner, the mess emptying out around them while they talk and laugh, or just sit quietly. Not shying away from most of the eye contact—instead looking right back. More touches, casual and not: squeezing Poe’s shoulder in farewell, picking lint out of his hair, sitting close enough their knees touch and, when Poe sometimes leans into any of this, leaning right back. He lets himself smile exactly how he wants to at Poe, which he knows is dopey sometimes, but other times he’s pretty sure it looks a lot like how Poe smiles at him: suffusive warmth in his eyes, unwavering, like he set the universe to its cosmic spin and put every bird in every sky.

Finn learns about a new facial expression then, maybe a new emotion. It looks a lot like hope, but a different kind than what’s driving them all to keep fighting. It has less fire, less bite, lights Poe’s face like dawn. He likes it a lot. It's  _nice._

 

* * *

 

One day, just to try it out, Finn says, “I’m a person.”

Poe looks up from the chart he’s been grumbling over. It takes him a second, but he smiles and says, “Yeah, buddy. You are.”

Finn says, “Yeah.” And then Finn says, “How do you tell someone you love them? Aside from kissing them after a crash and then passing out for four hours.”

Poe looks startled. And then confused. And then anxious, and yeah, Finn’s getting the hang of this face-reading thing.

There’s a little bit of that hope poking through when he says, “You just sort of tell them, from what I gather. It’s what I’ve always done.”

“What, like you just say it? Apropos of nothing?”

Poe laughs a little and says, “I mean, you _can_ . But you can also make a thing out of it. Romantic stuff like candles and flowers and nice music. Sweeping gestures. That kind of thing.”

Finn thinks.

“But you don’t do any of that?”

“I mean, I’ve only done it a couple times, and both kind of goosed me. Popped out,” he says, looking shifty.

“Like you were just having a conversation and it just happened?”

“Not really a _conversation_ ,” Poe says, and looks shiftier. “More like we were really naked and having a lot of fun.”

“Oh,” Finn says, and then he’s thinking about Poe naked and his mouth waters. It’s weird. He likes it.

“Yeah.” And then: “So you planning on telling someone you love ‘em, huh?”

Finn says, “Maybe,” with a smile, and then he leaves, because he thinks he saw a clump of deep purple lichen flowers near one of the hunting traps.

They’re scrubby, not the prettiest things in the universe, but Finn likes their simplicity, the thick, sturdy petals. They’re insistent, hopeful things, like the small clutch of people living in the base. Like Poe Dameron.

He pilfers a cup from the mess, fills it with water, and walks to Poe’s quarters. Here, he stands for about a minute and a half, sets the flowers in their little cup on the ground, knocks, and runs away.

 

* * *

 

Four hours later, Poe finds him antsily cleaning a window that looks out on the hangar bay. Finn doesn’t hear him walk in, just turns to find him leaning against the wall next to the door with a crooked little smile on his face. It’s a testament to the constancy of having good people around that he doesn’t jump at suddenly finding a person standing there.

“Oh,” he says, and feels dumb about it. Poe’s smile widens, dark eyes dancing with some seemingly sourceless catchlight in the dim room. ( _I_ _t’s from the window, Finn. Light happens with windows._ ) Finn’s hands feel dumb, too, one hanging limp at his side while the other clutches a damp rag.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever given me flowers before,” and clearly Poe’s not beating around the bush. Which is good, probably. Finn kind of wishes he hadn’t knocked and run, but at the moment he’d been swamped with a sudden inability to face Poe down with flowers in one hand and his heart in the other. Better to leave them as a clue. A very obvious clue. Which Poe has effortlessly puzzled out, because he's Poe and also it hadn't been a hard connection to draw.

“Me neither.” His face feels hot, and he has a whole new appreciation for Rose's doing this so fearlessly. And also kind of wishes he could pass out for four hours afterwards.

“That’s a damn shame,” Poe says, and pushes off the wall to come closer. Finn hasn’t seen him smile like this before. It’s making him feel kind of cornered, but also kind of gleeful. And warm. Everything these days is so kriffing _warm_. “You deserve flowers.”

Finn swallows, and tries out a smile of his own. Says, “Yeah?”

Poe’s almost toe to toe with him now, and they’re so close to the same height that neither of them has to dip their head or crane up at all for eye contact.

“And candles and nice music.”

“I was gonna do candles too,” Finn says. “But I couldn’t find any, and none of the music I know seemed right.”

 _Kriff_ , the way Poe looks at him sometimes, like right now—it lights Finn up like a hyperdrive.

“Goin’ all out, huh?”

“You deserve it.”

Poe deserves every good thing the universe has to offer. Poe deserves every kindness, every gentle thing, every lumen of light.

Two months ago, Finn didn’t know what kindness was, not really. It was as much of a myth as love, and just as off-limits. So he can’t really fathom, sometimes, how much of it he feels now, and how much of it he sees. How much of it he has to offer.

“Kriff, Finn,” Poe says, and there’s that sweet kind of hope. “You’re gonna kill me, you know?”

Finn says, “Why would I do that?” And rallies his courage, reaches out to set his fingertips on Poe’s arm. It’s tentative, asking permission, which is granted immediately with Poe’s leaning into it. Poe reconsiders a beat later and catches that hand up in both of his own, brings it to his mouth to press a kiss to the rise of Finn’s knuckles. Finn swallows, eyes on Poe’s mouth. “I’d miss you too much.”

“Force,” Poe says, and stares at him. He squeezes Finn’s hand, says, “Are you sure about this, buddy? I already told you I don’t exactly have a good track record with this, and I’d rather do any number of degrading and painful things than hurt you, ever.”

“I’m really kriffing sure,” Finn says, and tugs his hand free of Poe’s so he can lay his palm on Poe’s chest. His heartbeat is rapid and strong. “I trust you.”

Has he ever said that before? He doesn’t think so.

There’s this big, heavy exhale from Poe, like he’s been holding his breath for 80 standard years and just had it punched out of him, but he doesn’t look upset about it. He looks overjoyed.

“I trust you too, buddy,” he says, and reaches out to cup Finn’s face in his hands. “So much.”

“Can I kiss you?” Finn asks, because that feels like how it should work, asking permission—and _oh_ , if he could live every day with Poe Dameron smiling at him like _that_ , he thinks he could do anything.

Instead of answering, Poe presses through that last sliver of space separating them, and yeah. _Kissing_.

(Later, they will talk for real, but for now it’s just this: Poe’s callused thumb pressed to the corner of Finn’s mouth; Finn’s hand at the small of Poe’s back, the other one cupping the back of his head and doing absolutely nothing to tame already chaotic curls; the feel of each other’s smiles and happy huffs of breath; and warmth; and love.)

**Author's Note:**

> I set out writing this on a quest to get Poe and Finn to do that good good smooch stuff while also being respectful and good to Rose. There's been this big surge in the fandom of dumping on Rose because she gets in the way of Poe/Finn, which I get because it sucks that this new character has been tossed in as an impromptu obstacle to this queer ship a lot of us hold to be very important. But 1) it's not her fault that the writers did this, and 2) take a second and think about how many existent characters in popular media there are that can be ID'd as strong, persuasive, confident, compassionate, deeply moral, And Female. We don't have a lot of these good good ladies, and like, her role isn't even all that eaten up by the romantic plot with Finn. She still gets to be her own person for most of the movie, even if it does get messed up by the whole Noble, Loving Sacrifice thing.
> 
> Anyway, just. Be nice to her??? There're so many ways to still get Poe/Finn out of what's been offered in canon. Just be kind and creative, y'all.
> 
> Also! I am shiny new to this, like. Entire Fandom, and am thus missing a lot of the beyond-movies lore--like that whole frickin comic series about Poe????? goD. So just. Bear that in mind!


End file.
